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is of equal, if not of greater, importance. If it is to produce cffects of tactile delicacy,-as in surface polish, or soft consis tency, a nice touch is requisite; if the work is judged by colour, the optical part of sight is demanded; if to produce musical or articulate effects, the ear is involved.

No amount of flexibility or compass of the active organ will enable us to rise above our discrimination of the effect produced; and an inferior flexibility will be greatly extended by the effort to comply with a delicate perception. Moreover, the associations of mechanical skill are, as has been seen, a mixture of grouped muscular movements and situations with sensible impressions; and the importance of the sensible part has been shown by the failure of the other connexions on its being withdrawn.

(3) The special Interest in the work may flow from various sources. The possession of the active endowments is an inducement to exercise them, and all exercise within the scope of one's powers is agreeable; while superiority is still more agreeable. Then, as regards the Sense: a sensibility highly developed, say for colour, is a source of pleasure, as well as of discrimination. Besides these modes of interest, growing out of the possession of the natural aptitudes, there may be adventitious sources. It not unfrequently happens that a charm attaches to something not within the compass of our aptitudes. We may have sufficient musical ear to enjoy music, but not to acquire the musical art; and the same with colour. We then have a sort of admiration for a power that gives us a pleasure, and that we do not possess. Finally, whatever circumstances give an artificial value to mechanical acquirements, incline our devotion to them, and so facilitate our progress.

48. In the conduct of mechanical training, regard is to be had to the vigour and freshness of the system; and the exercises must be continued long enough to bring the energies into full play.

The physical vigour and freshness, both of the moving organs, and of the senses, being a prime requisite, mechanical drill is most effectual in the early hours of the day, and after the refreshment of meals. The exercise should be continued long enough to draw the circulation and the nervous agency copiously towards the organs exercised; at the outset of an operation, there is both a stiffness of the parts and a feeling of fatigue, both transitory; the blood as yet has not found its

way to the members engaged. When, at a later stage, genuine fatigue comes on, the exercise should cease; the cohesive power is then at a minimum. In the army, recruits are drilled three times a-day-early morning, after breakfast, and after dinner-for an hour and a half to two hours each time. The apprentice at a trade learns by fits and snatches, and mixes up the performance of work with the acquisition of new powers. The pains special to the learner are of two sorts-fatigue of the attention, and the exhaustion caused by repeated trials and failures.

ACQUISITIONS IN LANGUAGE.

49. First, Oral Language. This acquisition involves an active endowment-Articulation by the Voice; and a sense-the Ear.

The beginnings of articulation belong to the early stage of the voluntary acquirements. The child must first arrive at the power of articulating single letters and syllables; these are then united into words; and words are conjoined into sentences.

As in the case of the Active organs for mechanical acquisition generally, we must assume as the conditions of articulate cohesiveness, (1) the muscular vigour of the larynx and associated members, (2) the vocal spontaneity, and (3) most important of all, the special discrimination and retentiveness attaching to the vocal movements, connected, we may suppose, with the high organization of the allied motor centres.

Next, is the delicacy of the Ear for Articulate Effects, implying both discrimination and retentiveness, the first being accepted as a criterion of the second. This endowment may be looked upon as related to the special nerve centres of hearing (on the passive or ingoing side of the brain).

When these two natural endowments stand high, the acquisition of words and of verbal sequences will proceed with proportionate rapidity. If there be a good general adhesiveness in addition, the progress will be still greater. Moreover, language is the acquisition of words, not by themselves, but in association with things. Hence, the next condition :

50. As language is an association of names with objects or meanings, we must include, as a condition, the law of heterogeneous adhesion.

That is to say, we are to look to the goodness of the asso

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ciations (inter se) of speech on the one hand, and of the objects named on the other, as formerly explained. We learn much sooner the names of things that impress us, than of those that do not. Each man's vocabulary is made up, by preference, of the names of the objects that interest himself; the Naturalist knows more names of his own department than of other departments.

51. Besides the mere vocabulary, Language includes a great number of definite arrangements of words, with a view to its various ends, and subject to grammatical and other laws.

We have not only to name things, but to make affirmations about them, and, in other ways to unite or compose consecutive statements. These forms may be exceedingly numerous and varied for the same meaning or purpose. Their ready acquisition is almost exclusively governed by the circumstances of pure verbal adhesion. The fluent orator, the diffuse and illustrative writer, the poet, must excel in mere verbal abundance, irrespective of the limits of the subject

matter.

52. While the acquisition of language must depend, in the first instance, upon the opportunities of hearing and speaking, the effect of Repetition is greatly modified by special interest.

Of the mass of language that passes through the ear, only a selection is retained, and that selection, although partly depending on iteration, is also greatly dependent on our interest in the subjects, and our liking for special modes of describing the same subject.

A man's vocabulary will show who he has kept company with, what books he has studied, what departments he knows; it will show farther his predominating tastes, emotions, or likings. We see in Milton, for example, his peculiar erudition, and also his strong fascination for whatever was large, lofty, vast, powerful, or sublime. In Shakespeare, the adhesiveness for language as such, was so great, that it seemed to include every species of terms in nearly equal proportions. Only a very narrow examination enables us to detect his preferences, or his lines of study, and veins of more special interest.

Many terms and forms of language are permanently engrained by some purely accidental concentration of the mind,

or awakening of attention. Thus, when we happen to have felt very much the want of a word, before being told it, the impression is a durable one. Any interesting circumstance attending the utterance of a phrase stamps it for ever. The emphasis of a great orator, or actor, will impress his peculiarity of language.

53. As regards Elocution, the powers of the voice are subservient to the Ear for Cadence.

The Ear for Cadence is probably a sense partaking both of the musical and the articulate ear. Either of these alone, in the greatest perfection, with the other deficient, would not suffice for the actor or the elocutionist. The fine sense of cadence stores the mind with many strains or melodies of utterance, which the orator reproduces in his oral delivery, choosing, if need be, the words that give most scope to the melody.

The purest exercise of verbal adhesiveness is seen in vocal mimicry, which demands the endowments of voice, articulate ear, and ear for cadence, with little besides.

54. Written language appeals to the sense of Arbitrary Visible Forins.

Written symbols depend for their adhesiveness on the muscular endowment of the eye and its related nerve centres. A well-known aid to verbal memory is to write with one's own hand what has to be remembered. The effect of this is not simply to add a new line of adhesion, the arm and finger recollections-although we might remember by thesebut to impress the forms upon the eye, through the concentrated attention of the act of copying.

55. Short modes of acquiring languages have been often sought; but there are no rules special to language. Any undue stimulus of the attention to one thing is at the expense of something else.

Health, regularity, method, the absence of distractions, are the conditions favourable to all acquisition; granting these, each mind has a certain amount of adhesive aptitude, which may be distributed in one way or in another, but cannot be added to. A language involves a certain definite number of adhesive growths, drawing upon the adhesive capability to a proportionate degree. What is spent upon that must be taken from something else. It will afterwards

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be seen, that acquisition is economized by the detection of similarities; and this has a special application to the study of languages that are cognate to one another. It is now the custom for good teachers of the classical, as well as of the continental, tongues, to lay open the deeper affinities with our own, so as thereby to promote the memory of the vocables.

56. A good verbal adhesiveness is of value in the memory of knowledge or information conveyed in language.

The repetition of speeches, poetry, &c., by rote is an exercise of the verbal memory. Sir Walter Scott had this power, although doubtless it was greatest where the subject inspired his feelings. Macaulay was distinguished by his verbal memory. Such men, by their memory for words, remembered also the information attached to the words. In the extreme cases of this endowment, the memory of an exposition or discourse is consistent with a total ignorance of the meaning.

RETENTIVENESS IN SCIENCE.

57. Knowledge, as Science, is liable, in a greater or less degree, to be clothed in artificial and uninteresting symbols, in which guise it has to be held in the mind.

Familiar and matter-of-fact knowledge may be embraced under the sensible and concrete forms of nature: the rising of the sun is a phenomenon of visible succession. But in Astronomy, the gorgeous march of the heavenly bodies appears as a mass of algebraical calculations.

58. Sciences are divided into Object Sciences-those of external nature, and Subject Sciences, or those relating to mind.

The Object Sciences range between the most Concrete, as Natural History, and the most Abstract, as Mathematics.

In the more Concrete and Experimental Sciences, as the Natural History group (Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology, &c.), Geography, Anatomy, Chemistry, Heat, Electricity,-the actual appearances to the senses constitute a large part of the subject matter; hence in them, the Concrete mind (whose starting point is Colour) will be at home. The number or detail of the visible aspects is such as to need this endowment. Still, as sciences, they involve generalization and general notions, and cannot be divorced from the arbitrary symbolism or machinery suited to the high generalities; hence they may